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Introduction

MacCunn’s outstanding opera, Jeanie Deans, was first performed by the Carl Rosa Opera Company at the Lyceum, Edinburgh, on 13 November 1894. It made a brilliant tour of the provinces ending with its London debut (22 January 1896). It was in repertoire until the 1920s (when Puccini swept the stage) and has been several times revived (most recently by Opera West in 1986 and 1994), on all occasions being highly praised, which makes it truly astonishing that this is the first recording with orchestra of any part of it at all.

Nicholas Temperley has described it as ‘unquestionably the finest opera of the late Victorian period’, praising its ‘refreshingly personal idiom’ and powers of musical characterization, and finding in it ‘a prophetic touch of twentieth-century realism …’ (Music in Britain, The Romantic Age).

The central characters are two sisters; Effie Deans, who has to confess the birth of an illegitimate child to her sister Jeanie, the heroine, whose faith, honour, simplicity and nobility are the true subject matter of the opera. Effie, accused of child murder, has her own honour too, refusing to reject her seducer or to allow even the slightest subterfuge to save herself from imprisonment for a crime she denies with unswerving sincerity, and under the terrible rejection of her father.

Her lover, faithful too in his own way, attempts to rescue her from prison during the Porteous riots in Edinburgh—but again she refuses the easy way out. She is saved by Jeanie’s heroic, barefoot journey to London where persuasive goodness wins, via Queen Caroline’s intercession, a Royal pardon for her sister which arrives in the nick of time.

The story is based on Sir Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, a title which cynically refers to the old Tolbooth prison formerly in Edinburgh’s High Street, but which Scott and MacCunn have now made synonymous with all that is best in human nature.

As a whole, the opera is tightly constructed, the scenes dramatically paced, and the musical inspiration sustained—especially in Jeanie’s impassioned pleading before the Queen. Finally, her and Jeanie’s faith in ultimate justice is vindicated. Effie’s father has forgiven her and Staunton and his men’s resistance to the guard is made unnecessary by the arrival of Jeanie with the Royal pardon.

Recordings

Hamish MacCunn: the name itself is a kind of bold statement, and if ever there was a composer who emerged from the glens and firths of Scotland, fully armed, the MacCunn was that person. Yet this is the first recording devoted solely to his work and, ...» More

Details

Scene. An open space before Davie Deans Cottage. When the Curtain rises, young men and women are discovered dancing to the strains of a fiddler

Some Dancers: Who cometh here?
The Laird of Dumbiedykes! how gay his dress! Now, Jeanie Deans, beware!
He is on conquest bent.

Dumbiedykes enters. He stares slowly round upon the groups of young people, who salute him respectfully

Good even, Laird!

Dumbiedykes: Ech, lads and bonnie lasses, have ye care of Davie Deans, who liketh not the dance, nor yet the song for when I trolled.

The dancers join hands and form a ring enclosing Dumbiedykes, around whom they circle

Dancers: Now laird a ransom. That shall be a song; nought else.

Dumbiedykes: But neighbours!

Dancers interrupting: Laird, a song, there’s no excuse!

Dumbiedykes: What must be must. looking significantly towards the Cottage But …

Dancers: Safe, ’tis milking time.

The opening scene by Davie Deans’s cottage is full of vivacity, starting with a popular Scottish tune—‘Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie’. The chorus encourage their awkward but popular laird to sing a song. He is fearful of Davie Deans’s disapproval of song and dance, but the chorus point out that Deans is at the milking.

I love a lass that’s fair to see,
But much I doubt if she love me,
Oh, woe’s the day!
Full many a weary mile I ride,
To find my heav’n at her dear side,
But when I ask her for my bride,
She says me ‘nay’.

I dress myself in all my best,
With gold-laced hat, with crimson vest.
And buckled shoon.
She looks me scornful up and down,
Her face grows dark with frown on frown;
Yet I’m no treach’rous spark from town,
Nor common loon.

I, smiling, look into her eyes;
The answ'ring glance my art defies,
And chills me through.
It says, more plain than words can speak,
Tho’ all the winds of life be bleak,
That blow on woman frail and weak,
I wed not you. I love a lass that’s fair to see,
But much I doubt if she love me.
Oh, woe’s the day!

The Laird O’ Dumbiedykes duly obliges with a touching admission of his unrequited love for Jeanie Deans.

Jeanie, coming forward, bursts into a passion of tears. Sounds of a fiddle and the cries of dancers are heard from a distance

Jeanie alone: What can it be that weighs upon my spirit? makes me weep, as one who mourns because of shame or death? Why run my thoughts to Effie ev’ry hour? Can aught have happen’d to the child, whom, day by day, we bear on soaring wings of prayer toward Heav’n? Ah! that she ever left her shelter’d home! No sparrow falls without the will of him who made it. He will guard our dove, and keep her safe. Oh! why then do I fear?

Effie: Jeanie! Jeanie!

Jeanie: Effie! my poor bairn!

The sisters fall into each other’s arms and remain in close embrace

We hear a brief sound of off-stage revelry as Jeanie is left alone with her thoughts. She intuitively worries for her sister Effie, who appears, shame-faced, only able to confess to her situation at Jeanie’s prompting by removing her maiden snood. Whether her lover or her midwife has disposed of her baby, whether it died naturally or unnaturally she cannot tell and when the officers arrive to arrest her for child murder, she can only deny her own guilt, having no explanation to offer. The high drama of this scene is established with conviction and a powerful sense of contrast with the gentle domesticity of the opening. The contrast between the characters of the two sisters is equally effective; both passionate, but Jeanie with a moral truthfulness, Effie with her own emotional truth.

With a great effort Deans steadies himself and turns with bowed head to the Dancers

O friends I said but now, ‘My Effie hath no part nor lot with you!’ I take not back the words. Ye are not charged with murder; nor on those that love you falls the curse of a dishonoured name. Forgive my pride. These knees have never bent to man, or lowly here would I your pardon crave. I, a father, old, crushed down and shamed; who ne’er again will lift his poor grey head.

MacCunn’s dramatic skills are further underlined by the contrasts of dignity represented by the officers of the law, confronted by Davie Deans’s initial conviction of his daughter’s virtue, followed by his powerfully realized acceptance of the reality of the situation. His final, unforgiving curse of Effie, despite her moving plea and the protest of the chorus, claims with appalling authority that his is the voice of heaven. The conflicts and tensions of this multi-layered scene are expressed with telling economy and absolute coherence.

Deans: Stand all aside, and hear a father speak whose child is now a castaway, a profligate and vile! The joy of my old age is past; the light of these poor eyes is quenched, and now I pray that heav'n may call me home.

Dumbiedykes: But, neighbour Deans, there’s pow’r in gold, try gold.

Deans: No coin of mine or thine shall save this harlot from her shame.

Effie: O father, father, shame indeed, is mine, but these poor trembling hands know nought of blood. Look on me, guiltless but for one great sin! Gaze deep into mine eyes … no murder there! Search all the hidden secrets of my heart. Aye, ask the recording Angel sitting high in Heav’n, and if thou find’st this charge is true, then let me be anathema, but not till then. O dearest father, not till then!

Deans:Thou hast shamed our honest blood! Here is no place for thee since foul with sin, thou comest like the Evil One where dwell the just in saintly purity. Go! Go! The hearth and home that once held thee so dear shall know thee never more!

Jeanie, Dumbiedykes & Dancers: Take back the curse! take back the curse! For vengeance is of Heav’n.

The Common Room in the Tolbooth Prison. Effie is discovered seated at a rude table, singing, and apparently but half conscious of the scene around her. Her fellow prisoners are listening with attention and sympathy

Effie: Oh! would that I again could see
The little cot that shelter’d me
Through childhood’s happy years
It lowly stands beneath the hill,
Where flows a tiny, babbling rill …
I think thereon with tears.

The lark soars high above the lea;
The salt wind bloweth from the sea;
The mavis blithely sings
While merry children shout and run
Till gloaming tells that day is done
And loud the curfew rings.

Still chants the brook its constant lay;
Still warble birds on ev’ry spray;
The salt wind bloweth free …
But now, alas! the peaceful home,
The meadows where I used to roam
Are like a dream to me.

In this excerpt, Effie, imprisoned in the Tolbooth, recalls the happiness of her country home bo. MacCunn raises her feelings to a complex and powerful level without compromising their innocence and spontaneity, skilfully leading the simple melody to a climax enriched by highly chromatic harmonies.

Sleep for the day is done,
And the failing sun
Low on his couch of gold reposes;
Eve the amber curtains closes.

Sleep for the night is near,
Nay, do not, do not fear,
When Baby on his couch reposes
Mother’s hand the curtain closes.

A roistering prisoners’ chorus (not recorded) is followed by a beautiful lullaby for Effie, imagining her child in her arms. Again MacCunn invests her innocence with deeply expressive meaning, the subtle harmonies being deliberately slightly blurred by rhythmic delay, where a lesser composer would have been satisfied with straightforward sentiment.

Staunton: O Effie, darling, love! that I should meet thee thus, and know my crime the cause of all thy woe! Not even hell hath tortures half so keen …

Effie: Dear Geordie, hush! now thou hast come this gloomy prison house is like the palace of a king! My king thou art, my love, my life!

Staunton: Before us lie the golden days of love and in some distant land their suns shall shine with fadeless splendour. Thou and I, my Effie! Thou and I! O darling, think of it! Ourselves, our world, and all around us peace!

The final excerpt (somewhat edited from the original for this recording) is also set in the Tolbooth, and introduces Effie’s lover, Staunton, who fails to persuade her to escape. Her determination to put her innocence to the test of the law is powerfully balanced by her yearning to be with her lover.